about

Originally from a performance background, illesley (Peter Burgess) won a place at the Royal College of Art to study for the newly created Interactive Media MA.

At the RCA, his interactive movie Klutch (with collaborator Peter Robinson) was awarded a place at the Pavilion des Nouveaux Createurs in Cannes. Klutch was also shown at the Vasari Exhibition at the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London.

Various new media projects followed. illesley then moved away from digital media, set up a rewilding charity and retreated to the remote forests of South West France where he began creating glass mosaic portraits. As luck would have it, in a nearby town the painter Patrick Gozzo was holding sparsely attended classes in a quixotic effort to keep traditional painting skills alive.

illesley studied with Gozzo, and began exploring narrative painting as a new channel for his earlier interests.

Returning to London several years later, he developed a semi-abstract approach which he pursued under Dilip Sur and Turps Banana.

In 2017 illesley founded Chiswick Art School in West London, leading to an effective hiatus in his own practice until 2020.

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illesley's musical experience informs an approach to colours and marks as melodic and harmonic.

The abstract lyricism in illesley's work plays off a quotidian spirit. The ancient birthright of mark-making celebrated by Roy Oxlade is revisited in the light of the Bauhaus theorist Josef Albers, who counselled against "self-expression" in favour of analysis. "The eye of the needle is to remain objective about one's own subjectivity."